Day 14 ... highlights Rembrandt museum and flea market shopping

... went to the Rembrandt museum which also included a tour of the 17th century home he purchased and created a lot of his masterpieces in ... but, alas, eventually he went broke and could not pay the mortgage, and lost everything ...

• learned a lot about Rembrandt - I didn't realize he was so entrepreneurial, he actually took years perfecting the art of ink etching [on copper plates], they had a cool demonstration that showed the three main lines used in this technique (engrave, etch, dry point) which Remembrandt was also famous for during his day ... he realized there was a way to mass produce his art because once he had the copper plate complete he would cover with ink - in this way his art could travel in higher numbers versus just having a painting on a wall which only the rich or "well-to-do" could afford ...
• "Etching" was a technique Remembrandt was well known to have experimented with and perfected - and the prints were highly sought after ... each reproduction could turn out differently [and he was apt to experiment with deliberate variations in inking the plate differently - light vs. dark, shadowing, softening ... etc. ...
• the museum even had two of his original copper plates on display along with the inked etching ...
• also got a cool demonstration on how they "rubbed" oil paint back then ["rubbed" is the traditional word which now equates to "mixing" the oil paint] ... and how they used and stored it, and the evolution of the ingredients and shade variations from the past to today ... colours back then were much more Earthy in tone ... today much more synthetic because we don't use organic materials.
• I could go on and on but I'll end with ... it was a great museum to spend time and learn in ...

Did some bicycling and walking today and went to a few other attractions ... the other stand-out was the flea market right by our temporary abode. What initially drew us over was some funky swing music ... I felt kind of cartoonish in my scat beat walk as we made our way over there to investigate ... we got lost in looking at all the trickets from one stall to the next. I encountered another real treasure but tried my best to ignore it ... dang it! the pull was too strong - I ended up going back and bartering with the seller and purchased a captivatingly beautiful little Milo signed bronze statue of a naked dancer ... Sabine's treasure was a small box full of world coins ... she spent over an hour looking through them [part of the treasure was a 1958 Canadian penny ] once back at the abode.

Sooooo ... the music ... I did get pulled toward the funky swing music players consisting of one clarinetist and two guitarists ... that energy and beat just kept drawing me back to the centre of the market ... ended up purchasing their CD - real, feel good music ... took the CD back to the temporary abode and cranked it with a glass of wine (+ another) ...

An interesting character I met today: Inevitably, I purchased art today [a numbered print - giclée] and met a funky American artist by the name of Debra Hill who has been in Amsterdam for 30 years ... she takes time off "for inspiration" and travels to Cuba to paint. Most of her works are Amsterdam inspired -- I had quite an interesting chat with Debra. She certainly is a whimsical and energetic character and has opinions on everything from the Leftists, difficulties of hiring good employees, "progress", drug use ... and on ... have more interesting stories to relay on this one ...

Today's photo: once again it was tough to pick just one photo ... so I chose the "SwingTrotters" the 3-man [short the bassist though due to the rain] band that I described above during our sojourn to the market ...

Cheers - RGR

P.S. tomorrow we're off to spend the day in Brussels, Belgium ... will try my best to get to the daily Blog ... depends what time we return